


Wiggle Room

by manypastfrustrations



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 21:45:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5431928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manypastfrustrations/pseuds/manypastfrustrations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of one-shots about everybody’s favourite immortal girlfriends, and their travels through the universe. Snapshots of their story, from the very beginning through to them finally becoming girlfriends.</p>
<p>Most stories are written by me, although some will be contributed by my sister later on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Companion

Me tossed the manual onto the floor. “This makes no sense,” she sighed.

Clara looked up from where she was kneeling under the console, inspecting the wires within. “I thought you could read Gallifreyan?”

“I can,” Me said, reluctantly picking the manual up from the floor and opening it again. “That’s not the problem. It’s these instructions that don’t make any sense. They keep going in circles – literally and metaphorically – and I can’t make head nor tail of them.”

Clara sat back on her heels. “Perhaps we should try again later,” she suggested. “When was the last time you ate? It might make more sense after you have something to eat or drink.”

“Good point,” Me allowed, dropping the manual onto the console. The TARDIS groaned in response, and she looked up at the time rotor guiltily for a moment.

“After all,” Clara said, standing up, “what’s the point of having a diner out the front if we don’t use it once in a while?” She led the way to the door into their diner – the ‘front door’, they’d taken to calling it. Me followed her, sitting on one of the stools and leaning on the counter.

“And what can I get you today, ma’am?” Clara asked, slipping into waitress mode.

“Just a milkshake, thanks,” Me said. “Strawberry. And try not to drop the glass this time, please,” she added, as Clara turned towards the shelf of glasses behind her.

“That was one time!” Clara said, but nonetheless placed the glass very carefully on the counter.

Me watched as Clara reached into the fridge under the counter for the ice cream, scooping it into the bottom of the glass. She poured the strawberry syrup into the glass, and topped it up with milk, stirring the drink with a long spoon. For a final touch, she added whipped cream on top, before pushing the glass over to Me.

“Thank you,” Me said, placing a stripy straw into the glass and taking a sip. “Mmm,” she said, watching as Clara put the ingredients away.

“Did you ever make food for the Doctor when you were his companion?” she asked suddenly.

Clara froze for only a moment, facing away from Me as she washed the ice cream scoop. “No,” she said shortly. “He didn’t eat much.” Then she frowned, turning around to face Me. “Hang on. Are you suggesting that I’m your companion now?”

Me shrugged. “Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? I’m the immortal one who’s lived practically forever, and seen more of the universe than you have. If anything, I’m showing you around.”

“But,” Clara said, leaning on the counter, “I’ve been travelling in a TARDIS for longer than you have. I know how to operate it, plus I’m more used to time travel. If anything, you should be my companion.”

“Yes, but can you read the instruction manual?” Me smirked. “I thought not.”

Clara pursed her lips, and went back to clearing up.

Me realised that she had gone too far. She had only meant it as a joke, but it seemed that Clara took this more seriously than she had thought. “But then again,” she said carefully, “neither of us it the Doctor.”

“What’s your point?” Clara said, her voice a little colder than usual at the mention of the Doctor.

“My point is,” Me said, “that one of us doesn’t necessarily need to be a companion to the other.” Clara turned around, and she continued. “Surely we’re pretty much equal here. I mean, one of us can never die, and the other one is frozen in the moment before her death. I get repaired every time I get hurt, and you don’t even need to breathe, let alone eat or sleep. It’s not exactly a normal dynamic, is it?”

“Then what are we?” Clara asked. “To each other, I mean. Friends? Work partners?” _Another sort of partners?_ she thought but did not say.

“How about just companions?” Me suggested. “Travelling companions, flying around the universe in a 1960s diner.”

“Both companions,” Clara repeated, beginning to smile. “I like that.”

“Come on,” Me said, standing up from her stool. “Let’s get back to work on that chameleon circuit.”

“Sure,” Clara said, coming out from behind the counter. “But then again…”

“What is it?”

Clara glanced around the diner. “Do we really need to change it?” she asked. “I mean, this is a pretty cool setup, you have to admit.”

“It is,” Me agreed, “but it’s a bit ostentatious. It would be difficult to hide, on planets where it didn’t fit in. That’s sort of the point of a chameleon circuit.”

“But we could use it to our advantage,” Clara said. “This diner could be a way to integrate ourselves into other planets.”

Me frowned. “Integrate ourselves?”

“Well, the Doctor paid for his drink with music, right?” Clara asked. “So what if we used this diner as a business, but instead of charging money, we ask for stories in exchange for food or drink or whatever. That way, we could travel the universe, and meet people on the way! What do you think?”

Me looked at Clara’s face, excited with her new idea. She nodded slowly. “You know, that is a pretty good idea,” she said. “How about we try that for a bit, and then if it doesn’t work, we’ll have another crack at the chameleon circuit. How does that sound?”

“Awesome,” Clara grinned.

Me smiled also. “So where shall we go first?” she asked, leading the way through to the control room.

Clara followed, closing the front door behind her. She purser her lips, considering the question. “Somewhere awesome,” she said eventually.

Me grinned, walking to the console. “Done,” she said, typing some co-ordinates into the TARDIS and pulling the lever, sending their time-travelling diner flying through space.


	2. Memories

“So, do you know how old you actually are?” Clara asked, turning her head to look at Me. They were sitting in the doorway of their TARDIS, legs dangling out as they watched a star slowly collapsing beneath the diner. The star was millions of miles away, but Clara and Me could clearly see as the gases in the star prepared to explode.

Me raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a woman her age?” she asked, but Clara could hear a note of humour in her voice.

“You know what I meant,” Clara said.

“I don’t know,” Me said. “How old I am, I mean. I lost track a few billion years ago, when I was still living on Earth. Not that I can remember living on Earth all that well.”

“You remembered me,” Clara said.

Me tilted her head and looked at Clara. “Of course,” she said. “You were important, especially your death.”

“Oh, thanks,” Clara said, turning back to look at the star.

“Of course, I couldn’t really remember you,” Me said, also looking back at the star, still slowly collapsing below. “I had books and photos, but no actual memories of what you were like. It’s one of the many problems with having a finite memory.”

Clara glanced sidelong at Me. It was evident that her lost memories bothered Me more than she let on. Clara was intrigued, but she didn’t want to press the point too far, at least not yet. Instead, she said, “Well, you don’t have to rely on books now. I’m right here.”

Me allowed herself a small smile. “That’s true.”

There was silence for a few minutes as the women watched the star collapsing, the protons and electrons of the gases within fusing into heavy gases and contracting into neutrons, until it was almost too small to see from where they sat.

Eventually, Me spoke again. “Before you died,” she said hesitantly, as though she wasn’t sure she should be asking, “you mentioned someone. You said, ‘If Danny Pink can do it, so can I’.”

Clara’s shoulders stiffened. “That’s a very precise quote,” was all she said.

“I wrote it down, everything that happened that day,” Me explained. “Word for word. Like I said, it was important.” She glanced at Clara, who was still sitting stiffly, shoulders hunched slightly. Nonetheless, she pushed on. “Who was he?”

There was a pause before Clara replied. “He was a teacher, when I knew him,” she said. “I worked with him. Before that, he was a soldier.”

“Were you two together?”

“You don’t beat around the bush, do you?” Clara said. When there was no reply, she sighed. “Yes,” she said. “We were. But then he died.”

“He died saving someone else.” It wasn’t a question.

“Sort of.” Clara sighed. “It was complicated.”

There was another few seconds of silence before Me said, “Write him down.”

“Excuse me?”

Me turned her head and looked at Clara properly. “Write down everything that you remember about Danny Pink,” she told her. “What he looked like, how he sounded, what he smelled like. How you felt when he spoke to you. What foods he liked. Write down everything, because he’ll begin to fade in your memory, until one day you won’t be able to remember him at all, and that’s not a situation you want to be in over someone you love.”

Clara nodded slowly. It was obvious also that this had happened to Me before, probably more times than she would care to count. “All right,” Clara said. “Yeah. I’ll write him down. Later.”

“Don’t leave it too long,” Me said, turning back to the collapsing star. “Hang on, I think it’s about to happen.”

“What’s about to happen?”

Before Me could respond, the answer quickly became evident as suddenly the star shrank into itself, as if sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. Less than a second later, the entire star exploded into a supernova, releasing a mass of heat and energy in a kaleidoscope of colour. A few seconds later, Clara and Me felt the shockwave of energy pass them, strong enough to rock their TARDIS.

Clara was used to keeping her balance standing up, but she quickly found out that sitting down was much harder. She let out a small shriek as she felt herself falling towards Me, only to feel a pair of strong arms encircling her a moment later, holding her steady. “You okay?”

“I think so.” It took Clara a moment to realise that she was effectively being embraced by Me, her head leaning on the other woman’s shoulder. She froze for a second, before realising that actually, she didn’t mind very much.

It seemed that Me didn’t either, as she chuckled, adjusting her position slightly to suit Clara’s, arms still around her shoulders. “Falling over while sitting down,” she said, “now that takes talent.”

“Clumsiness is one of my talents,” Clara said lightly, allowing herself to relax slightly. “Besides, I’m used to standing up in a TARDIS. I notice you seem to be all right, though.”

“Yes, but I’ve had longer to practice,” Me reminded her. “I’m proficient at most form of balancing, although I’ve never been very good at standing on top of people’s heads. They will keep moving around.”

“Is that a situation that often comes up?” Clara asked, shifting her position slightly so that she was sitting closer to Me, head still on her shoulder. “Standing on people’s heads.”

“It’s the basis for a sport that becomes popular on Earth around the 25th century,” Me said, adjusting her position to suit Clara’s.

Clara frowned. “You’re having me on,” she said. “Right?”

Me smirked. “Perhaps,” she said. “But in terms of the universe, stars dying is much more common than standing on people’s heads.”

Clara had almost forgotten what they had been doing, but at Me’s words she turned her attention back outside the TARDIS, to where they had been watching the star explode. “What happened to it?” she asked.

“It’ll become either a neutron star or a black hole,” Me told her, “depending on its mass. I’d hazard a guess at a black hole.”

“It was beautiful,” Clara said.

“It was sad.”

“Are they mutually exclusive?”

Me smiled, leaning her chin on top of Clara’s head. “They don’t have to be,” she said, looking out into space once more.

There they sat, Clara and Me, in the doorway of their bizarre space diner, watching the universe go by. They both knew that they would have to go to Gallifrey one day. But until then, they had all the time in the universe.

* * *

 

When Me was in bed that night (or at least, the time they had designated for sleeping), Clara found herself at a loss. She had no need for sleep, trapped as she was between one heartbeat and the next. Clara had quickly learned that without sleep, a person had a great deal of time left over for other activities. The problem was finding enough things to do to fill the gaps.

Wandering down the many corridors of their TARDIS, Clara eventually found herself in what looked like an office. There was a large desk in the centre, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with thick books.

Picking a book at random off a shelf, Clara opened it to find that it was empty inside. Frowning, she tried another book, and another; but they were all filled with blank pages, devoid of all writing.

Clara frowned, looking around. She knew that Time Lords were eccentric, but what was the point of a room filled with empty books?

She approached the desk in the middle, hoping for answers. Instead, she found yet another empty book lying on the desk, opened to the first page. A fountain pen lay invitingly beside the book, as if asking for her to use it.

Suddenly, Me’s earlier words came to Clara: “Write him down, because he’ll begin to fade.”

At that moment, Clara understood. She looked around the room once again, realising that it wasn’t full of empty books, but rather full of books that hadn’t yet been written in.

Finally understanding the purpose of the room, Clara sat down at the desk and took the lid off the fountain pen, poising it above the first page of the book. After a moment, she began to write, the black ink of her neat handwriting stark against the creamy paper.

‘Dan the Soldier Man,’ she began.


End file.
